Water might be on the forefront of everyone's minds in California as we face continued drought conditions, but in India there's a mother losing her daughter every single day due to the lack of clean, drinkable water.

In the past 10 years there's been a shift in news media. Many news organizations went from striving to be the watchdogs of the community to doing everything possible to increase the number of "Likes" they get on a Facebook post, ethics be damned. What's wrong with being liked, you may ask? Aren't media companies in the business of increasing their audience?

Even if I walked to work each day, I would still be indebted for my daily bread to cars and trucks. The many goods we buy in stores arrive at their destinations courtesy of the internal combustion engine. Motors and engines are woven into the warp and weft of all our economic activity from farming to manufacturing. Although small amounts of biofuels are mixed with the gasoline we purchase, most of the fuel we use comes from crude oil.

With the month of March marking National Women's History Month, it is important that we not only observe the significant strides made by women throughout the decades, but also acknowledge the barriers continually facing women today. One of these barriers remains in the modern workplace, where, despite women accounting for nearly half of the workforce, their earnings continue to be considerably less than their male colleagues.

Have you ever heard the expression "cheat to win"? Certainly we all have been presented with situations throughout our lives where cheating might have been the easier route, while also ensuring us a guaranteed win. But if you're someone who enjoys that feeling of accomplishment you get when it was your own blood, sweat and tears which ultimately resulted in a "win," then you're also most likely an individual who wouldn't resort to changing the rules of the game after several failed attempts to get to home plate. If you did that, you'd be just as ...

Every time I fill my gas tank, I see the notice on the pump that explains part of the fuel I'm buying is ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol, a type of biofuel rather than fossil fuel. While biofuels can be good to promote national energy independence and possibly help with greenhouse gas emissions, the ethanol in our gasoline is made from corn. (The starch in the corn is broken down into sugars that are then fermented into alcohol.) With corn ethanol, we are essentially putting food into our gas tanks, a fact that some people take exception to because it ...

A recent article in the Turlock Journal reported that the California High-Speed Rail Authority was granted an extension from the Federal Railroad Administration in paying $180 million it owed the FRA, and quoted Congressman Jeff Denham accusing the FRA of "protecting the Authority" by bypassing the current high-speed rail funding agreement in order to keep the project moving forward.

This week, USDA released preliminary data from the 2012 Census of Agriculture that provides a snapshot of a rural America that remains stable in the face of difficult economic times. While the data do not paint a perfect picture, they do tell a story of the unlimited potential and growing opportunity in modern rural America.

During his recent visit to the drought-stricken region of Fresno, President Barack Obama brought attention to global warming and human-caused climate change, warning of the dire consequences the state will continue to see in regards to extreme weather conditions.